Tag Archives | nuclear

Researchers at a US lab have passed a crucial milestone on the way to their ultimate goal of achieving self-sustaining nuclear fusion.

Harnessing fusion – the process that powers the Sun – could provide an unlimited and cheap source of energy.

But to be viable, fusion power plants would have to produce more energy than they consume, which has proven elusive.

Now, a breakthrough by scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) could boost hopes of scaling up fusion.

NIF, based at Livermore in California, uses 192 beams from the world’s most powerful laser to heat and compress a small pellet of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place.

The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel – the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.

On this episode of Breaking the Set, Abby Martin takes with a look at the conflicting reports about chemical weapons being used in Syria, news of Israeli airstrikes in Damascus, and the importance of taking information from the corporate media on this issue with a grain of salt.

Massoud Ali Mohammadi, one of Iran’s leading nuclear scientists, was assassinated in Tehran Tuesday, just two days after the top US military commander in the region announced that the Pentagon has drawn up plans to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.

The killing and the ratcheting up of military threats are indicative of the deepening international tensions over the Iranian nuclear program. While the US, Israel and other Western powers have charged Tehran with seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon, Iran has insisted repeatedly that its nuclear programs are for peaceful purposes only.

Ali Mohammadi, 50, was killed when a powerful remote-controlled bomb exploded near his vehicle as he prepared to drive to work at Tehran University. The blast shattered windows 300 feet away in Ali Mohammadi’s northern Tehran neighborhood of Qeytariyeh. It was reported that the bomb was strapped to a motorcycle.

There’s 23,125 active warheads in the world, and this article warns nothing is likely to change “except that 1) more states will acquire nuclear weapons, 2) more non-state-actors will acquire them in some form, and 3) the tactics available to states to win nuclear battles will become unpredictable with new technologies.”

A British nuclear expert who fell from the 17th floor of a United Nations building did not commit suicide and may have been hurled to his death, says a doctor who carried out a second post-mortem examination. Timothy Hampton, 47, a scientist involved in monitoring nuclear activity, was found dead last week at the bottom of a stairwell in Vienna. An initial autopsy concluded that there were ‘no suspicious circumstances’. But it is understood that Mr Hampton’s widow Olena Gryshcuk and her family were deeply unhappy with that verdict.

Now a doctor who undertook a second post-mortem examination on behalf of the family believes she has found evidence that Mr Hampton did not die by his own hands. Professor Kathrin Yen, of the Ludwig Institute in Graz, Austria, which specialises in traumatology research, said she had more tests to complete on Mr Hampton, who had a three-year-old son with Ms Gryshcuk. But she said one possible theory was that Mr Hampton was carried to the 17th floor from his workplace on the sixth floor and thrown to his death.